


Have An Adventure!

by IShipItAllAndThenSome



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: (there's no cause; she's just a tiny baby gay with squishy feelings and kara is a goddess), Alex Danvers Has A Motorcycle, All Human AU, Alternate University, Bisexual Kara Danvers, College AU, Cute Ending, Everyone Is A Big Gay Nerd, Everyone Is Gay, Everyone is a nerd, F/F, Implied Luthor Drama, Jealous Lena Luthor, Kara Danvers Is A Badass, Kara Danvers Is Over-Protective, Lena Luthor Has a Crush on Kara Danvers, Lena Luthor is a Gay Mess, Lena is a mess, Meet-Cute, Swearing, Underage Drinking, if it's good and gay it didn't happen in real life, speaking of:, this is barely semi-autobiographical, wonder woman - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-25 23:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12046218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IShipItAllAndThenSome/pseuds/IShipItAllAndThenSome
Summary: Lena Luthor is a college freshman with too much on her plate. She’s slept eight hours in the past two weeks and has consumed her body weight in instant coffee granules and is surviving off microwave mac’n’cheese with canned peas and is not looking forward to a 7.00a.m. Judicial Board training meeting. She leaves her ID behind, locking herself out of both the library and her dorm, only to be rescued by a jogger who has absolutely no business being so functional and attractive when the moon is still in the sky.





	Have An Adventure!

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to write something small and soft and gay, and there have been some minorly gay moments in my life since I started college, so I thought I'd throw some of them in. They're all from Friday, but none of them have been fruitful. Still, my gay ass is just glad to be here.
> 
> Also: take your meds! I'm bad at it, and I keep forgetting, but take them. Be better than me.
> 
> (It's not hard!)

Somehow, she has slept until 4.55p.m.

There are no classes today, so it’s not bad, per se, but now there’s no way in frilly hell Lena was going to go to sleep and wake up before her 7.00a.m. training meeting for the J. Board at Stanhope.

It’s not like she has any interest in participating in the justice system again - being a witness was bad enough - but it’s an interesting activity that has rules and regulations, they promise free coffee, and the email was very crisply worded so Lena was helpless to say no, and it’ll look good on resumés.

She’s still not sure if she’ll need one. If Lillian will allow her to work for the family business after she threw Lex under for insider trading.

So Lena does the last of the semester’s French homework, fiddles with some open code, and fails repeatedly at doing a handstand. She’d be embarrassed to fall over and bruise herself so much if her roommate were there, but Jess is a sociable person with lots of friends and that means Lena gets her dorm room largely to herself, so it’s slightly less soul-crushing to look like an idiot.

Slightly.

Come six, she showers off the sweat of ninety minutes of vinyasa flows, avoids bleeding on her towel, and makes it out the door with two minutes to spare.

She reaches the library and sees the door light is red. Her dress, unfortunately, lacks pockets; her bra is free of that rounded plastic rectangle bearing her too-blank face; her bag is void of all identifying information save her name on her laptop’s password-protected lock screen.

_Shitting fuck._

Lena starts back towards her dorm, heels clacking on uneven stone in a crescendo that ends up sounding like machine gun fire as she draws nearer to the freshman building, turtle-shell moon mocking her above it.

Sidewalk repairs have left the ground weirdly smooth, but that doesn’t stop her from tripping when an actual Amazon comes up over the hill.

Silhouetted, Lena can’t quite tell if she’s wearing a shirt. She briefly hopes the Amazon is not wearing a shirt, and then hates herself for thinking something so outrageously male gaze-y.

The girl is wearing a shirt - maroon cotton, worn thin, clinging to her very clearly muscular abdomen - and sensible leggings with, of course, pockets. She smiles to Lena as they pass.

And Lena stumbles, touching the nose of her glasses with a caffeine-twitching thumb as she smiles back to hide her face (her smile is _too much_ , ugh), and the Amazon is there, ready to catch her if she can’t catch herself.

Lena _can,_ and _does_ , but the girl is still there.

“Hey,” she says, voice warm and comforting as jasmine green tea fresh from the microwave, “you okay?”

“‘m gay,” Lena croaks. Her cheeks burn. _Dumbass._ “I’m okay! I mean.”

The girl grins. “Hi, Okay. I’m Kara. Danvers.”

 _I’m weak._ “Lena.” 

Like an idiot, Lena offers Kara her hand in a classic boardroom gesture, totally ready to go all empowerment seminar on her when they shake.

Kara doesn’t fall for it. Her palms are smooth and soft and somehow not sweaty, and her grip is firm but not domineering, and the pad of her thumb works in a little rubbing pattern against the web of Lena’s. “I saw you heading towards the library earlier. Did you forget something?”

“ID.” Lena’s jaw is tight, wound tighter by how much more embarrassing it is to be incompetent in front of a gorgeous girl who could probably bench press her when she’s full of Target brand macaroni. “And it’s still too early to be open doors, so I can’t get in, but I can’t get back to the dorm to get my card, so I’m fucked. And training started…” Lena checks her wrist. _Balls._ “Six minutes ago.”

“I’m headed that way,” Kara says, eyes bright. She hasn’t let go of Lena’s hand. “I’ll unlock for you. It’s all good.”

“Oh, my god, thank you so much.” Lena’s probably not going to cry over this. If she does, she’s not telling Jess, because then Jess will update the _Days Since Lena Has Cried_ counter and it will go from one to zero, and Lena is _not_ having that. “Kara Danvers, you’re my hero.”

Kara laughs, a belly-deep thing that Lena wants as an alarm, because she would - and probably will - lose sleep over that giggle. “C’mon. We can’t both be late.”

Lena takes off her heels to cut across the lawn, because it’s a shortcut and because Kara’s eyes flicker over to the steep slope like she wants to take it, and the grass is dewy through her stockings and it feels stupidly nice. As stupidly nice as the warm spot Kara’s thumb left on the back of her hand, or the weak shadow she casts over Lena’s face.

Once on solid ground again, Lena puts her heels back on and finds herself three inches taller than Kara. _Six inch pointed-toe pumps,_ she feels, _are worth it if it means Kara looks ever so slightly up at me._

 _She could totally pin me to a wall, but still_. 

They run up the stairs, and Lena unlocks her door.

“Should we be worried about your roommate?” Kara asks at a whisper.

“Jess has a life; she’s never here.”

Lena really hopes Kara doesn’t have time to see her unmade bed, the crying tally, or the microwave containers and empty aluminum cans she has yet to put in recycling.

(People are always in the kitchen and it is terrifying to pass them. She was going to drop them off on her way to the shower, but maintenance was in there and just hearing the rink running made her feel like she was going to shit herself.)

Lena dashes over to the windowsill, grabs the card, and dashes back out, slamming and locking the door behind her. “So!”

“So.” Kara’s eyes should not be so warm; blue is, no matter what the movies say, not a member of the warm color family. “Coffee and criminal justice.”

 

⚢

 

The meeting goes well, except the part where Lena keeps accidentally making eye contact with some Sports Boy, or where she turned up seventeen minutes late just in time for the supervisor to reach the _lateness will not be tolerated_ clause of the handbook.

Lena drinks twenty four fluid ounces of coffee on an empty stomach, remembering she forgot to take her meds (again), spills her first cup on the floor, and takes the uneaten Munchkins to her first class as a form of social lubricant.

(She eats all the blueberry ones. Fuck social lubrication; those sons of bitches are _hers._ )

Classes are good. That Winn kid in her history class says he uses her class comments in his notes, which leaves her stunned for a solid twenty minutes, because he says this right after she remarks that the Baltimore Washington Monument depicts him as ‘Grandaddy Zeus’ and the whole room goes silent. In her Shakespeare class, she avoids being grouped with Veronica, who was cute for two weeks and then they ate lunch together at the café and Lena found out she didn’t think she could ‘seriously date a crazy chick.’

Now Veronica won’t stop smiling at her, all red lipstick and photorealistic serpentine tattoos and long bones.

(She’s still hot; her personality is just total garbage.)

After her last class, Lena has a meeting with the independent radio/news supervisor.

Whose name is Kara Danvers.

_Shit._

She’s not in that goddamned t-shirt anymore; now it’s a softball jersey that hangs too low at the armpits, showing off: a) a bandeau the same color as her eyes, b) the muscles cording her ribs, and c) her perfect, perfect arms.

“Oh, hey, Lena!”

_Shit, shit, shit, shit._

Lena feels childish with her pastel iced green tea latte and oblong vegan margherita pizza, but Kara seems unfazed. Kara also has her hair down around her shoulders in loose curls and a pair of glasses on her face.

“Glasses squad,” she says, grinning and pointing to the thick black frames.

 _Stop it,_ Lena chides herself, _you useless lesbian!_ She replies weakly, “Glasses squad,” and sits down. “Sorry I’m early. Class let out half an hour ago, and I checked my email - ”

_just so you know what to look for: comets jersey by the glass wall of the campus Noonans - Kara_

“ - and saw you were here and I just…”

“Early’s good! C’mon, take a seat.”

Lena takes a seat, picking a crispy bit of soy cheese off her pizza. It tastes weirdly Saltine-like. 

“So, are you more interested in radio or publishing for the Mag?”

“Um, well.” Stop. It. “Both, I guess?”

Kara grins. “Cool, cool! I’m not the radio gal, that’s Leslie, but I can hook you two up. What do you have in mind?”

_Hooking up with you._

_Shut up, Lena!_

“Well, my friend Winn is really into the theatre community here, and I was thinking I could do a spot with, um, with little previews - they choir is already auditioning soloists, so I thought I could have the potentials come on and sing for the student body, just to get them hyped up for the performance in October.”

Wide-eyed, Kara sets down her sticky bun, chewing quickly so she can talk. “Oh, my god! Winn? I know him. He’s _so_ fun. I see him in Cat’s office all the time!”

_Kara’s on first-name basis with the most intimidating professor on campus. Of course she is._

“No way.”

“That’s so cool.” Kara licks caramel off the tip of her finger, stopping Lena’s heart before continuing. “I really like that idea. We don’t have the greatest sound system yet, but we’re getting new microphones next week, so this is going to be great. How much sound editing experience do you have?”

“Um. Some? Minimal, very minimal. Like, skin-of-skin-of-skin-of-teeth.”

“That’s okay. Leslie can teach you. She’s kind of a lot to handle, but you two will get along great! I can tell.” Kara sighs, sips her smoothie. “I wish I was majoring in Theatre. My foster parents are both scientists, my sister’s in med school… But Journalism’s fun, too!”

Lena wonders what Kara’s vocal range is. She also has a brief flash of _Dead Girl Walking_ starring Kara and downs two thirds of her latte in one gulp because _get on all fours_ is not something she needs to be hearing in this walking daydream’s voice in public. 

“My mother’s not too keen on me doing anything but business school. Science is okay, too.” Lena shrugs, begins to babble. “I’m not complaining. I mean, I love chemical engineering, biochemistry, actual engineering, physics.”

Encouraging, Kara grins.

“I just want to do a lot of things, and I’m worried that I don’t have time.”

_Or money._

_Is Lillian going to pay for next year now that I’ve testified?_

“Well, if you ever want someone to talk to, my door’s always open.” Kara touches her hand, thumb rubbing soothingly again, this time over her knuckle. “Even if you just want to study in silence next to someone, since your roommate’s always gone.”

“That sounds really nice. Thank you.”

Lena’s definitely going to cry today.

“I have to go. Softball practice’s in ten minutes, and I’ll be there in eight if I sprint.” With a squeeze, Kara stands. “Oh! Here’s my number.”

She writes it down on a green PostIt note shaped like a typewriter, sticks it to Lena’s laptop, and disappears in a flash.

Lena eats her cold vegan pizza in her dorm and definitely doesn’t cry even a little.

 

⚢

 

Leslie Willis is brash and loud and uses more profanity than clean language.

Kara was right; Lena loves her.

“So, Barbie’s sent me new froshmeat?” she drawls, crushing an empty can of Pepsi Maxx in her fist and tossing it behind her towards a wire trash can. She ricochets off the wall and misses horribly. “Fan-fucking-tastic. What do you know about audio editing?”

“Not much, practically, but I’ve been doing tons of research.”

Leslie rolls her heavily-lined eyes and opens a new can with her thumbnail like a cable movie frat boy. “Research can literally suck my dick.”

She runs Lena through the program they use, from download to tiny detail, over the course of an hour, in which they each consume about 500mg of caffeine, then deems her ‘no longer a flight risk’ and tells her to fuck off.

Lucy, from J. Board, texts to say that they’re showing Wonder Woman on the quad and that she’s bringing salt and vinegar kettle chips. This is as close to an invitation as Lucy Lane gives, so Lena swings by her (uninhabited) room to grab her big space blanket and change into something she’s moderately more okay with getting grass-stained. Her jeans don’t quite fit, too long in the legs, so she’s constantly hiking them up by belt loops that guarantee to die on her any day now, but her butt looks nice and no one will see them anyway under the blanket, so she convinces herself that she gives fewer fucks than she does and meets Lucy on the grass.

Lucy’s there with her girlfriend, Vasquez, sprawled out on a festival blanket in a nest of snack foods. They’re wearing matching t-shirts with the poster printed on them, and Lucy is absently raking her fingers through Vasquez’ hair, both of them looking utterly at peace.

Lena parks besides them in lotus position, muddy boots on her knees, and hides in a crinkly silver cocoon. It reflects moonlight weirdly up on her glasses, but she ignores that in favor of eyeing the chips.

“There are plenty,” Lucy says, nudging a can her way with a bare foot. Her toenails are painted alternating magenta and aquamarine, chipped enough to have been there for a month or so. Vasquez’ thumbs match - left pink, right blue.

“Thanks,” Lena replies, popping the top and thinking that they’re obnoxiously adorable. She wonders if Kara Danvers has kitschily painted toenails.

Then Kara Danvers sits down on the other side of Lucy and Vasquez’s blanket, spreading out her own - a microfleece throw patterned with Harry Potter kittens - in a slashed-neck Stanhope hoodie and basketball shorts, hair pulled up in the most charmingly sloppy of topknots. She comes bearing Chinese takeout from the only place nearby, the one with the hopelessly racist name but perfect General Tso’s Tofu, and a six pack of Blue Moon.

Lena had forgotten that her friends were all upperclassmen. 

Besides Winn. He’s a baby frosh like her, with the bow ties to prove it.

In greeting, Kara whips off her hoodie to reveal yet another matching t-shirt (and a brief hint of muscular flat belly that makes Lena’s brain go staticky) and crosses her arms like she’s wearing gauntlets.

Because she is.

“Do you have the whole costume?” Lena blurts, and immediately regrets blurting.

“Lena, hey!” Kara’s eyes sparkle in the moonlight. “Yeah, actually. I can’t wait until Hallowe’en, when I can actually wear the whole thing out.”

Surreptitiously, Lena sets a reminder for Hallowe’en. It’s already one of her favorite holidays, but now, she’s got an alarm set for **gird your loins dumbass - KDWW** and is prepared to die a happy woman.

“What are you going to be for Hallowe’en?” she continues, and it takes Lena a moment to register.

“What? Um. I hadn’t quite. Decided.”

All three pairs of eyes turn on her.

Vasquez is the one to break the silence: “Sacrilege.”

_“Je suis desolée.”_

“You gonna wear something gay?” Lucy asks, grabbing a beer and holding it out to Kara.

Kara lifts the hem of her shirt to grip the metal cap and twists it off.

Lena’s pretty sure she was brain dead for three seconds.

“Who am I kidding? ‘Course you are.” She drapes herself over Vasquez’ shoulder and casually smooches her cheek with a deliberately dramatic noise, swaying them gently enough not to spill their beer. “Amelia Earhart? Peggy Carter? You’d make a killer Leggy Peggy.”

Lena instinctively curls her legs in tighter, wraps the blanket tighter. “I don’t know if I’m dressing up, actually.”

More gawping.

“No.” Lucy takes a sip. “No way in hell. Costume maketh collegiate.”

“I don’t think that’s an actual bromide.”

“I don’t think she gives a shit,” Vasquez murmurs, petting the slope of Lucy’s neck. “You gotta come up with something, kiddo.”

“Something good.” Lucy points with her beer. “Something gay.”

“And what are you two going to be?”

“Cosima and Delphine. Duh.”

“Neither of you are tall enough to be Delphine,” Lena mutters, cracking a Vanilla Coke Zero and chugging it.

Lucy drawls, “Brutal,” and grabs a fortune cookie. “Let’s see… ‘If you are afraid to throw the dice, you’ll never roll a six. Learn Chinese: apple = ping guo. Lucky Numbers: 04-54-39-52-51-56.’ See?” She gives Lena a pointed look and flicks the fortune at her, beaning her in the nose. “Come up with a costume.”

Lena jerks, nearly spilling. “Yes, ma’am.”

The movie is great. Of course it’s great, it’s fucking Wonder Woman (2017, dir. Patty Jenkins). Not four feet away, Kara is mouthing along to all the best lines and jamming out to the electric cello score and pounding pot stickers. At some point, her hair comes out of its bun and spills over her shoulders, made curly by the twisting style, and Lena catches a whiff of her shampoo.

Come movie’s end, they hit up the only open cafeteria and get ice cream from the machine. Kara’s biceps are a work of art when scooping rock-hard mint chip, but her forearms could actually kill a woman.

Lena is that woman.

Lena is _dead._

 

⚢

 

Lena’s radio spot goes well enough. Winn is duking it out with some dick named Mike for the tenor solo, but according to the poll she set up, he’s going to get it. 

The anonymous poll.

The poll with names up has Mike winning by a landslide, which, ew. 

And then he starts working on the campus production of Rocky Horror, and she gets to record some of the rehearsals for the Wire.

And then there’s Kara, in a white bra and panties, begging to be _touch-a touch-a touch-a touched_ , and Lena has to count to eight hundred and think about colonial cheesemaking.

Nothing is less sexy than fermentation before people understood bacteria.

But, as expected, Kara is incredible. Everyone is incredible, and it’s just the first rehearsal. Winn actively drools over the guys playing Rocky - both Journalism majors, one the photographer for the official school paper; who knew holding a camera resulted in arms like Burmese pythons? - but somehow manages not to make an idiot of himself when he’s running his lines.

Editing is difficult, not because Lena doesn’t know what she’s doing, but because she forgets what she’s doing.

It’s difficult to cut together an effective trailer to put on the Wire’s website when she keeps getting distracted by watching the performances - not just Kara’s, although mostly Kara’s, but all of them. Everyone’s good when they’re performing and they’re fun when they’re not, because they all seem to know each other and get along pretty well. At one point, Kara and one of the Rockys are sitting on the lip of the stage, chatting, but when they get called up, they spring to their feet and rip off their robes like some sort of comic book transition, and there’s a solid minute of cracking up.

The door flies open with a bang, and Lena jumps, sloshing gone-cold coffee on herself.

“Oh, hey,” and an arm comes to rest on the back of Lena’s chair, which, _why?_ “Prom Queen in panties.”

Lena slams the laptop shut with a squeak. “Leslie! Hi!”

“Rocky edits?”

“Yes.” Lena nodded, downing the last third of her coffee, which was all half-dissolved instant, and grimaced. “Goin’ great! Goin’… great.”

“Okay, then.” Leslie thwaps her on the shoulder, all bravado, and starts for the door. “Can you have it in by midnight?”

“Yes..?”

Leslie’s heavy booted footsteps stop, and she spins Lena’s chair around and leans over her, staring her in the face. “Asking. Or. Telling.”

“Telling?”

Leslie cocks an eyebrow and gives her the most disparagingly incredulous _really?_ face Lena has ever had the privilege to receive.

“Telling.”

“Then put your boner away, get your hands out of your pants, and get to work.”

“My hands aren’t even in my pants,” Lena protests, waving her double-fisted travel mug in the air. “See? Totally professional.”

The Face makes an encore appearance, and Lena sighs.

“Yes, ma’am.”

What’s weird is that it’s not even Kara in her underwear that’s distracting in the end. It’s how much fun these people are all having, even when Vasquez-as-Frankie tries to walk in heels and trips over her own feather boa, or when Winn borrows someone’s glasses to attempt _Damnit, Janet_ and forgets his cue because, _Holy shit, your vision sucks!,_ and just stands there blinking for almost two minutes, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

She finishes editing, sends it to Leslie for final check, and goes home. 

Jess, for once, is in her dorm, hair shower-damp and clinging to her cheeks. She’s studying these color-coordinated flash cards like she’s had them for months instead of weeks and has a Domino’s box sitting on the foot of her bed.

“Lena, hi.” She looks up from her notes briefly to flash a smile and point at the box. “I know it’s really late, but it’s brain fuel. Feel free to take a slice.”

“Oh, wow. Thanks.” Lena toes off her shoes and pads over to Jess’ bed, selecting a the least infringe-y piece and parking on her own, legs crossed, to take a bite. After a moment, she asks, “Hey, Jess?” in a damningly hesitant voice.

“Yeah? What’s up?”

“Are you doing anything this week?”

“Besides everything I can to not fail my first oral exam?”

Lena nods.

“Probably.”

“You know how you said we should hang out, orientation week, and then we haven’t, because - ”

“You’re a workaholic recluse who doesn’t even talk to the people she’s in clubs with?”

“Yes, that.”

“Do you want to hang out this week?”

“Yes, please.”

 

⚢

 

They go to a party thrown by the pre-med assholes in the Lord building Saturday night, and it’s actually kind of fun.

Lena figures, since she hasn’t technically taken her meds in a week or three, it’s okay if she drinks. So she drinks.

Not a lot - god knows, she knows she can - but enough to not have her nerves be so immediate. 

There’s a nice guy named Jack, the TA in her biology lecture, and he seems plenty nice, and another girl named Alex who kidnaps the bourbon - “not because I’m going to drink it all, but because it’s too nice to be turned into body shots” - offers her some. 

“Okay. Thanks.”

The three of them stay together long enough to pour three drinks, and then Alex disappears.

“Are you thinking about pre-med?” Jack asks.

“Um. Yeah.” Lena swallows a mouthful of bourbon. “But also some other things? Business school. My mother wants - wanted - um.”

“Sorry, is your mum dead?”

“No! No.” Lena laughs. “She just hates me.”

“Oh.” Jack drinks. “Fun.”

“It’s okay. I testified against my brother and he got a five year sentence for embezzling, so that was - tap, tap, tap - the final nail in the coffin of our mother-daughter relationship.” Lena waves a hand. “It’s fine! She never liked me anyway.”

Jack reaches over and gives her a hug. He’s tall and broad-ish, but not very muscly, so it’s a very nice and non-threatening teddy bear kind of thing, and Lena slumps into it.

“Well,” he says, “it’s freshman year. You can do whatever you want. Explore! Have an adventure!”

“How do I do that?”

“I don’t know.” He peers about the room, exaggeratedly scanning for something. “Join a club?”

“I’m in a lot of those.”

“Boo. That’s my best advice.” Jack shrugs, still smiling. “Don’t have a drug adventure. They’re not reliably fun or stress-relieving.”

“Wasn’t exactly thinking of those, but, um.” Lena awkwardly pats him on the shoulder. “Thanks.”

“You could make out with someone?”

“I’m gay.”

“And gay people don’t make out with people?”

“I just - in case you were hitting on me.”

Jack wrinkles his nose. “God, no. You’re eighteen. That’d be weird.”

“Good. Good!” Lena can’t help but grin. “To adventure!”

“To adventure!”

They tap their plastic cups gently together at the same time as someone gets thrown through a speaker.

There’s a crash, and the music cuts out.

“Alex, are you okay?”

“Yeah, ‘m fine.”

Someone very tall is hugging Alex, the kind of bone-count hug you give someone who might be hurt and not saying, and then they turn around to face a guy struggling up from the broken subwoofers.

“Okay, Lord.”

Oh, shit. His family donated the damn building.

“It was kind of loud in here, so maybe you didn’t quite catch her saying _no_ , but she said it, and I’m sure you know what it means, so apologize for trying to kiss Alex when she didn’t want you to.”

Oh, shit. It’s Kara.

_Damn._

Max Lord is shorter than her, and clearly not as strong, because Kara can pitch 120mph and he can barely push onto his feet, but he’s all entitled white boy bullshit and he literally owns the place. 

He swings on her, clumsy in his drunken rage, and she just catches his fist and throws him aside. 

He howls like he’s been shot.

“Kara,” Alex hisses, grabbing her by the (impressive) bicep, “we have to go. Now.”

“No, no. I’m gonna call campus security, and report him for sexual harassment, and explain my side of the fight.” Kara smiles down at Alex and gives her shoulder a squeeze. “It’s going to be fine. Do you want to leave?”

“Yeah.” She scowls. “Not as bad as I want to tell them he’s a piece of shit, though.”

“Do _you_ want to leave?” Jack asks.

Lena blinks.

“You’re shaking.”

“Um.” She is. “Yeah. I’ll find Jess - ”

“Your roommate?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll walk you out. You can wait somewhere less… charged.”

Jack walks her out, drapes her in his jacket, and sits on the curb with her until Jess shows up, behickied.

“Shit, are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. It was just. Loud.”

“C’mon. Let’s go.” Jess helps her to her feet and wraps an arm around her shoulders.

“No, you can go back inside. It’s fine. I’ll walk myself home.”

“Nah. Willis is in there baiting the bull, anyway, so there’s nothing I’d rather do than get you safely back to our dorm.”

“Thanks.”

They get back. Everything is fine. Lena sets an alarm and fills her water bottle so she has no excuse to skip her meds in the morning.

“So, was that, um.”

“The party was fine.” Lena sips her water. “I just. Don’t like fights.”

“Oh. Right.”

Jess is the kind of person who watches the news. She probably remembers the coverage around the trial: day thirty nine, Lena makes her statement and the courtroom riots; day forty, she has a black eye and some bruises around her throat, and completes her statement anyway.

What’s weird is, despite how awful the fighting was, it was mercifully brief, no blood was shed, and Lena wasn’t even a part of it.

What’s weird is, she keeps thinking about how confident and nice Alex is, how comfortable she was with Kara, how easily Kara took care of Max, how readily she went to blows for this girl.

It might be the receding panic and her brain trying to play cool, but all she can think about is being so super not jealous.

 

⚢

 

Lena doesn’t get out much.

Because of that, she’s the only person who’s never actually had a conversation with Maxwell Lord. He creeped her out so bad she didn’t join a theoretical physics club because he was at the sign up table.

She’s not in love with physics anyway.

So, his Judicial Board meeting is staffed by Lena and Lucy, who knew him but refused to recuse herself, with Megan Morse presiding and Jones supervising.

Lena kind of wanted to die. She usually dressed business formal, even for her six a.m. seminars, but this felt very U.S. justice system, and even though she wasn’t testifying and it wasn’t a courtroom, the atmosphere plus a suit felt _bad._

So, naturally, she did it anyway. 

“So, first, we have Lord, then his witness, then Danvers, and her witness - and no, Lucy, you still can’t be a character witness for her.”

Lucy sighed and cracked her neck. “Ridiculous.”

“You’re _serving on the board for this trial_.” Megan pinched the bridge of her nose and downed the last of her coffee before padding over to the Dunkin To Go carton and pouring another Large. “Then campus security, then we make our decision. Lena, we should be done before your nine o’clock, but if we cut it too close in deliberations, feel free to cut out. It’s totally cool.”

Because naturally, they’re convening at five a.m. on a Monday.

Lord comes in, oily and obnoxious. 

“Take a seat.”

He crosses his ankles on the table.

Lucy’s jaw twitches. “Max. Feet off the table.”

He pulls his chair in further so his feet hover in the air and the backs of his calves, instead, press into the laminated edge.

“So, in your own words, what were you doing last night at 10.33?”

“I was in my building.”

Megan starts in on her coffee again. Lena wishes she’d grabbed a second cup before he walked in, and settles for pulling her recycled napkin into her lap and starting to shred it.

They’re told to leave silence, because people will talk to fill it, but Max is too self-satisfied and arrogant to let them win.

“What were you doing in your building?”

“I was at a party.”

More silence. His deliberate, smug un-cooperativity is grating to the nth. 

“Can you describe, in detail, your activities at the party?”

He begins, now indulgently over-specific.

Lena’s lap is full of confetti by the time he so much as mentions Alex’s name.

“We were just talking, and then that psycho bitch Kara comes over and breaks my buddy’s speaker system with my face.”

 _Your face looks remarkably intact, then,_ Lena thinks, and makes confetti of confetti.

“And then she almost breaks my wrist!” Max takes his legs off the table and leans in, resting on his elbows. “Is she getting suspended?”

“Her sentence, Mr. Lord, is none of your business,” Jones says, voice dry. 

His ‘witness’ is just some faceless, nameless bro, insisting on how deeply Max loves and respects women. He’s not smart enough to lie about what actually happened, but he also probably doesn’t realize how much information he just gave away. 

They take a break, not because they’re at some significant point, but because they need to decompress. Lena downs three cups of coffee - Dunkin tastes weirdly garlicky when burnt and cold - and picks up a blueberry Munchkin. Lucy does these funny little trills, like she’s trying to imitate machine gun fire as Minnie Mouse, and Megan decides to finish the coffee straight from the carton after asking if anyone minded.

Professor Jones brings Kara in. She’s in her pajamas - pink, purple, and blue striped pants covered with ice cream cones and a Stanhope hoodie with the sleeves rolled halfway up - and comes bearing gifts.

“Not blackmail,” she jokes. “But I swung by Noonan’s on my way here, because you guys always get gross coffee.” She sets the to-go tray down in front of Professor Jones, handing him a cup. “Black coffee, two pumps DC, two pumps WC, one pump SS, and yes, I am being cryptic deliberately, you’re welcome. Megan, I got you a green tea latte, and they had a hot sauce bottle out for impending brunch, which means you are in luck! Weird, weird luck.”

Megan smiles, this beautiful glowing thing - like a Renaissance painting of an autumnal sunset or something equally embarrassing to admit to thinking - and takes a sip, sighing and mouthing _thank you._

“Lucy: pumpkin spice iced chai latte, six shots of espresso.”

“Lifesaver!” Lucy clutches her cup and melts around it, condensation puddling between her fingers. 

“And I unfortunately do not know your coffee order,” Kara says, rounding to Lena with apology all over her face, “so I got tea, instead, because tea is pretty inoffensive.”

Lena uncaps the cup and breathes in a cloud of sweetened bergamot steam.

“Earl Grey with lavender honey.”

“So we can be grownups,” Lena quips, taking a sip. No one responds, so she gulps down a burning-hot mouthful and tries not to cringe, because, _really? Lena? Who makes jokes about Victorian flower symbolism at seven a.m.?_

“What happened, Saturday night?”

“Alex invited me to a party in the pre-med dorm, and since my shift got switched with Adam, I figured why not? I showed up around eight, because we wanted to hang out for a little while, just us, and I hadn’t seen the newest episode of GoT yet, which, wow. No spoilers, but _wow._ Anyways, the party started around nine, I took _a_ beer, and we just sort of floated around for a while. It was pretty tame, for a Lord party, but that’s like being the tallest dwarf.” Kara grins. “Heathers? No?”

 _…and a babe,_ Lena sings to herself, downing another too-hot mouthful of tea.

“Anyways, at one point, I saw Izzy, and I wanted to say hi - I think around 10.15? - but Alex was talking about her favorite professor - ” Kara cuts her eyes Jones’ way so fleetingly Lena almost misses it. “So I left her to it. And then about fifteen minutes later, she sends me a rescue text, and I come back over to find Max Lord trying to suck her face off. I push him away, probably too hard, but it’s _Alex_ , you know?”

Lena definitely isn’t jealous.

“And I try to talk him down, but he decides punching me is a better course of action, so I grab his hand to stop him. Not hard enough to hurt him! At worst, he got a mild sprain. Alex wanted me to leave, but I stayed, because I wanted to talk to campus security as soon as I could, while everything was still fresh.” Kara has a doughnut somehow - raspberry glazed - and takes a monster bite. “I offered to check Max’s wrist, because they make you learn basic first aid stuff on the team, but he wouldn’t let me near him, so I backed off. I talked to security, and then Alex walked me to my dorm and called me a dummy and said goodnight.”

“Was there any other way to have handled this situation?”

“Probably?” Another bite. “I could have stayed with Alex; I could have been gentler moving him away; I could have tried getting his attention verbally first, or not touching him at all. But she S.O.S.’d me, and she’d said no, and he wasn’t listening, and it’s _Alex._ ”

Definitely. Not. Jealous.

“Do you regret your actions?”

“Him getting hurt, a little. Stepping in to protect her? Hell, no.”

“That’ll be all, Kara. Send Alex in, would you?”

“Sure. Thank you guys, seriously.”

Alex comes in, Barenaked Ladies t-shirt hanging off one bony shoulder, wearing a Comets hoodie with Kara’s name on the back half-zipped.

Lena. Is. Not. Jealous.

She has a coffee mug in hand, slate grey, and her flip flops slap the floor.

“Lane.”

“Danvers.”

“So, I’m going to preface this whole rigmarole with: I totally could have handled it.”

“Sure.”

“Kara’s just wildly overprotective. My rescue text explicitly said _get my ass out of here_ , not _throw his ass through a Bose sound system that cost more than my bike_.” Alex shrugs, rolling her eyes. “She’s like a puppy. She didn’t hurt him.”

“Um, why is Kara so protective?” Lena asks, un-jealously, without a single trace of jealousy in her voice.

“Because I’m her sister, and because she has this ridiculous hero complex with mass directly proportionate with her disregard for common sense.” Alex sips her coffee, then lets out an _mm!_ over the rim. “Did you know she once ran _into_ a car crash because she heard a baby crying? She was, like, thirteen. I mean, give me a break, you’re not indestructible.”

Oh.

“Anyways, I invited her over to watch the season finale and maybe swing by the party upstairs, because I knew Izzy would be there, and they haven’t hung out in a while. I got caught up, talking about the cellular bio quiz from last week, and then Lord is there, my study buddy poofs, and he’s being all…” Her lip curls, and she gestures effectively. “Right?”

Lucy nods, catching a half-hearted abortive look from Jones. “Impartiality, I know.”

“So he’s saying, _oh, my yacht just got a new deck, do you want to see it, it feels great on bare skin, yadda yadda_ \- super gross, won’t let me leave, and I don’t want to punch him, because the paperwork on this shit is annoying, but the next best thing is texting Kara, hoping she’ll be fast enough to catch him by surprise and whisk me off to somewhere that doesn’t reek so thoroughly of Axe.” She sets her empty mug down and shakes her head. “Bad call. Kara always tries to minimize the fuss, but there will always be fuss when the star pitcher goes all Buffy on a dickhead who’s  - ”

“ - afraid everyone knows his school endowment outsizes his physical endowment?” Lucy quips.

“Ha!”

“Lane, this is why Danvers isn’t allowed to sit on the Board anymore,” Jones reminds her.

“No, Kara can’t sit because she knows everyone and always gets into fights to stop drunken frat bros from grabbing girls’ butts.”

“Luce,” says Alex patiently, “there are two Danvers’.”

“Continue with the narrative.”

“So, I text Kara, Kara swoops in, she pushes him off me, he stumbles and - I’m not saying he threw himself into the sound system, I’m just saying I’ve played chicken with that girl, and even under duress, she has way better control than that, and Lord is a dramatic ass who would say a flobberworm gored him just to get out of taking his Potions notes.” Alex taps her mug punctuatively and says, “Also, his wrist wasn’t swollen or red or anything.”

“Are we still on for laser tag Thursday?”

“They changed student discount day to Wednesday.”

“Fuck. IT seems okay.”

“I’ll be there.”

According to campus security, Max Lord asked to be escorted to the infirmary, where they found no injuries on his person. Also according to campus security, Kara offered to replace any and all broken speakers.

Considering that Max was already on probation, they slap him with a suspension that they all know won’t stick, because he’s a legacy donor, but it’s still worth the effort.

 

⚢

 

“Knock-knock.”

Lena wheels around in her chair and immediately puts her feet on the floor, back in her pumps. “Kara! Hi!”

“I just wanted to ask how you were doing after the Board. I know from experience, that stuff’s stressful.” She smiles, eyes bluer behind her glasses, and hooks her thumb casually through the belt loop on her pants. 

“Um. Thank you. No, I’m - I’m fine. I’m good.” Lena attempts to smile back.

“You sure? You seemed kind of tense. Then and now.” Kara smoothes a hand over her braid. “Those shoes can’t be comfy.”

“Well, when your mother’s six feet tall and you’re a potato by comparison, you adapt to preternaturally short Achilles tendons.”

Kara giggles, a drawn out bubble of ebullience, then says, “No, but seriously, if you want some stretches for that, I have a bunch. Achilles tendonitis is no joke.”

“Oh.” _Kara stretching - stop it, brain_. “Thank you.”

“No, thank you.” Kara’s other hand mirrors its mate, and _now she’s standing there like a soft butch deputy sheriff, and why? Why are we both like this? Why is she so hot? Why am I so gay?_ “Your trailer for Rocky was really good.”

“I just - used the footage. I mean, it was inherently objective, since the camera was a non-sentient object, but. Um.” Lena can feel herself blushing. 

“You used non-performance stuff, though,” Kara says. “The bits where we were just joking around. It was fun - it _showed_ how much fun the show is. So thank you.”

“You guys all really seem to like each other.” Lena shrugs, fiddling with the hem of her skirt. “That’s part of why the show’s going to be so good.”

“You think we’re gonna be good?”

“Yeah, I do.”

For a moment, neither of them say anything. The editing bay is just really small, and really warm, and Lena can smell the brown sugar body wash Kara uses, and she berates herself for somehow being able to identify the damned scent of her body wash, because that’s probably creepy.

Then Kara asks, “So, how did you like the tea?”

“The tea?”

“At the meeting. I didn’t know your coffee order.”

“Oh! It was. It was really nice. I’m usually a coffee person, the more caffeine the better, but it was really good. I might have to get some on my own.”

“Or we could get some together?” Kara’s cheeks are pink now, too, but it just makes her eyes bluer.

Lena bites her lip.

“If - if you want. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable - I’m - I’m all about consent!”

“No! No, that sounds… that sounds really nice.”

 

⚢

 

Lena does lots of things that semester - dresses up as Joan of Arc for Hallowe’en, goes to a few parties, rewatches _Firebringer_ about a million times, eats her body weight in macaroni and cheese and canned peas, softly makes out with Kara at Noonan’s for about three hours.

Lena attends many J. Board meetings that semester, too - fights, pot, one live animal escape that caused a campus-wide shutdown - but the next J. Board meeting Lena sits in on at the asscrack of dawn is midterms week. She is tired. She is cold. She is wearing her girlfriend’s bi-ice cream pajama pants with the waistband rolled up so they don’t drag the ground,and she’s much comfier that time in them and fluffy Hufflepuff house slippers instead of pumps.

Her girlfriend shows up to deliver a box of doughnuts with her testimony on Mike Matthews drunkenly breaking someone’s arm at a party when they arm wrestled and starting an apparently very cinematic brawl, and entire torso is one big very visible hickey, because she took off her sweatshirt, and now it’s just school sweatpants and a sports bra.

Lena’s also wearing Kara’s sweatshirt. The sleeves wrap around her hands while she sips her Earl Grey with lavender honey.

“So.” She sets her cup down. “In your own words, what went down at the Rocky wrap party Friday night?”

Kara cocks an eyebrow, grinning. “I see you shiver with antici…”

_God, I love this nerd._

**Author's Note:**

> ...pation.
> 
> That could have been a Mulan reference, but Rocky seemed more prudent. Anyway, I hope you liked it, and if you did, please tell me in the comments! Thank you for reading!!


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